A new operator tees off this spring at Green Lake’s Pitch & Putt.
Amy Faulkner knew almost nothing about managing golf courses when she took over the Green Lake Pitch & Putt in mid-January, but she knows a lot about how to help people have a good time. When the CEO of creative agency Gilly Wagon (which runs Seattle Cocktail Week, among its other work) saw that the city needed someone to operate the nine-hole par-three golf course, she threw her name in the ring. “It’s such an old-school, cool, unknown little gem in the city,” says Faulkner. “I love the community aspect.”
Faulkner’s team comes in a little green (pun intended) on the golf parts—but so do most of the folks playing there. She had to explain the concept of a pitch-and-putt (and clarify that nobody was saying “pigeon butt”) to her team. But after a quick twirl through turf management school, they picked up the keys to the course with 75 days to get it ready for their goal of an April 1 opening. It had been left completely unattended since October, when the previous concessionaire moved out after more than four decades.
The nine-hole course sits on six acres at the south end of Green Lake, between bustling walking paths and a busy road, a precarious position for a sport based on launching small, hard objects into the air. The course is not designed for the serious golfer (“The slow greens bring Velcro to mind,” wrote Golf). Rather it is designed for any golfer—or nongolfer—and that was part of what enticed Faulkner: the chance to carry on its tradition as a place where people of all backgrounds can learn the sport, without dress codes, exclusivity, or prohibitive pricing. In fact, despite the work she and her team are putting in, they plan to raise the prices from last year by only $1. “We want it to be a reasonably priced option.”
The city granted Faulkner only a one-year lease, so she has been careful about what improvements need to happen now and what will wait for a longer-term lease. New turf mats for the tees this year, hopefully grass in year two. Next year, she plans on adding a restaurant serving Italian sandwiches from a shipping container. For now, she’s applied for a liquor license and will sell beer and snacks. When asked if that means the tradition of players toting backpacks full of Rainiers is over, Faulkner spins it around. “You don’t have to pack the backpack,” she says, adding that they are trying to make it reasonable. “We’re not going with stadium prices or anything like that.”
A variety of leagues, including ones for women and for first-time golfers (the latter with a golf professional on-hand to help with basics), are in the works, and Faulkner’s bringing back the same summer camps for kids that have run there in the past.
Twenty days into the 75-day process of getting the course open, Faulkner has hit a few snags. On their first visit, she and her team couldn’t get inside the building. When they did, the breaker box seemed to be grounded into the toilet. Last week, a drone they were using for overhead photos got inaccessibly lodged in a tree. But she remains hopeful they will make the April opening, and in the meantime, she catalogues their foibles on Instagram. And if they don’t make the date, well, she figures it will make an amazing April Fool’s joke.